On November 26, 2025, I wrote a critical piece titled “A Truncated List of the Greatest (Worst) Hits: Crimes of Capitalism.” I’ve slightly resculpted that essay here because I think—or rather, know—that it is becoming more urgent by the day, as a result of climate catastrophe (just take a gander at that statistic below), that we speak about this issue and spread the word to others.
One of the things that has been made clear to me by ✨your weirdo friend✨ is the necessity to build alternative, parallel economies that will enable us to divest from the economy. Melinda Cooper also writes, at the end of her superb and meticulously researched text Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024), about ways in which we can fight back against the “value of private wealth,” something I wrote about recently here. These are tools, too, that can begin the process of dismantling the system in which many of us feel trapped, but we’re not. The good news, too, is that USers and people around the globe are already fighting back, and I don’t just mean by going out with bougie signs that say, “If Trump weren’t President, I’d be at brunch.”
Updated: New Worlds Are Already Being Imagined, Created, and Nourished
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Jun 4
Note: This piece, originally written on March 30, 2026, includes an Addendum added on June 4, 2026, to include additional thoughts based on conversations I’ve recently had with ✨your weirdo friend✨ regarding the way in which USers have fallen for propaganda about themselves being “lazy,” “lethargic,” and “apolitical,” and how they also fail to understand how there is a lon…
There had also been a lot of discussion on my Substack about capitalism in late November, and I’d written numerous pieces on the topic since I (re)launched my stack that past summer, so I’m going to provide those previous links to several of my pieces below for readers who wish to explore those earlier writings.
I used to be an educator, as my Dad always says, “way back in the mist.” I’m still driven by the desire to teach people new things and new ways of thinking about the world. Once you’ve been an educator, that desire to share what you’ve learned never leaves you. But it’s also reciprocal. Suffice it to say, being an educator is not a one-way street. Educators are lifelong learners. I’m dedicated to learning as much as I can in the short time I have on this earth, and when I was an instructor, that included gleaning things from students. The most I learned was from an Iraq War vet at Brown University, who was one of my students there, as well as the North Koreans I taught in Arlington, Virginia, shortly after I had returned from teaching ESL in South Korea. All these students were vulnerable to me and showed me things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise if they hadn’t shared details of their lives and their worldviews. I’m indebted to them, as well as to all of my students. For the most part, my students, regardless of age, were endlessly curious and eager to learn.
Which brings me back to capitalism. In November of 2025, one reader told me they had difficulty reading much work by people who write about Marx. That’s understandable. I struggle myself with Marxist terminology, as it’s dense and complex, plus there are multiple schools of thought related to Marxian theory. That said, I thought it would be helpful to offer a list of the crimes the political-economic system of capitalism has committed, from a Marxist perspective, grounded in materialism and written in easy-to-read language. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a start, and I think it’s solid in capturing how destructive and exploitative capitalism has been and is to humans and the planet. Of course, I welcome additional points in the comments. Finally, I am committed to writing in-depth pieces on all eleven points I’ve listed below to flesh them out for further understanding—I saw this succinct list on Facebook and would have given attribution to the original poster, but I’ve forgotten who posted it. That said, I have changed most of it and added quite a bit of my own points and language. (As I already mentioned, I’ve written about some of these topics in previous pieces that touch upon Marxist thought, too.)
Here’s a breakdown of the crimes of capitalism:
The brutal theft of indigenous people’s lands without compensation and the genocide of those people, as well as their enslavement (still ongoing)
The enclosure of the commons, which was the privatizing of communal lands that all had used for farming, grazing, timber, hunting, etc. There is also the theft of the commons by AI.
Centuries of colonialism and imperialism, which are both still ongoing
Slavery (still ongoing) — someone actually told me that slavery existed before capitalism. (Big, if true! No, just kidding! I hope, dear readers, that you know that I’m aware that slavery existed prior to the emergence of capitalism.) However, slavery operates differently under capitalism than it did in other economic systems. Capitalism relied upon slavery for part of its development (the so-called birth of the U.S. is a great example). It functioned differently as it was not localized; on the contrary, this type of slavery was on a much larger scale and was profit-driven, as the logic of capitalism is to maximize the extraction of surplus value from enslaved people. To this day, it still relies upon slavery on a large scale, as we see in places like the Congo and elsewhere.
Endless, persistent wars for conquest and profit in the protection of private capital and at the expense of millions of lives (still ongoing)
Exploitation and destruction of the environment (still ongoing, and if we don’t change this soon, it will be the demise of our species, whether you think so or not--those are the facts)
The usage of state power to enrich private interests (still ongoing) at the expense of the public
Famines caused by colonial economic policies (still ongoing)
States that write laws and constitutions that aim to enrich capital and suppress labor (still ongoing)
The division of labor across gender and race, entrenching misogyny and racism to prop up white supremacy (still ongoing, including exacerbating and perpetuating homophobia, transphobia, etc.)
Cutting out and disposing of disabled and elderly people from societies when they are no longer able to contribute to the workforce, thus fostering cruel, ableist, eugenicist-oriented societies.
Deaths of despair are deaths by suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-linked diseases. The term "despair" is used to highlight how these deaths are integrally connected to economic inequality, a feeling of being invisible in society at large, and a sense of hopelessness. These aren’t just singular deaths, though clearly they are felt by family members and friends, but are also social deaths.
Again, this list is not exhaustive, so please, as I said above, feel free to add to it in the comments. On a final note, take the time to watch the video I posted at the top. It’s less than 4 minutes long, and the visuals and graphs are remarkable. The most remarkable and grim figure is that the richest 300 people on the planet have the same wealth as 3 billion people! That figure tells me, well, it’s the capitalism, stupid. And things need to have changed, like, tomorrow. But we no longer have yesterday, but we do have today, so let’s start a’ changin’ things. I know, we’re gonna make it.
Further Reading
Deaths of Despair and the Social Question of the 21st Century
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December 1, 2025
“A new 21st-century social question will have to situate the deaths of despair at its very center. To do so will require that we muster the resolve and thereby the courage to shrug off all sentimentalist appeals to blind fate and individual chance and accident. It would require that we begin to see that capitalism has not only killed us off too …
The Myth that Capitalism is only Bad When It's "Unrestrained"
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November 25, 2025
There is a myth commonly held by too many that capitalism works well until it becomes “unrestrained.” I received such a comment just the other day from a reader, who explained to me that “capitalism is the gathering of resources to accomplish something.” That’s their understanding of a s…
Autonomy and Creativity Reclaimed in the Commune
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November 13, 2025
This past summer, I had the pleasure of reading Kristin Ross’s The Commune Form: The Transformation of Everyday Life (2024), and I wrote a summary about her work here on my Substack (it was an enjoyable piece to write, just as pleasurable to create as it was to re…
The Case for Degrowth Communism - Kohei Saito's Marx in the Anthropocene
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June 22, 2025
Saito doesn’t mince words in his meticulous study, Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism, when he first writes, “[t]he world is on fire”(1). But anyone with any sense will agree with that sentiment when it comes to the ecological crises we’re facing. For many, the
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